


I knew you on the other side of the looking glass

by aesthete_laureate



Series: Time and Tears [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Altered Mental States, But it's only implied, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Oral Sex, POV Second Person, Period-Typical Attitude About Mental Illness, at the very end, coffee as a plot point, memory loss/alteration, mention of a car crash, or well more like Unintentional Voyeurism, which is a common thread among all the things I've written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:13:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28685400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesthete_laureate/pseuds/aesthete_laureate
Summary: A near miss between a wayward mechanic and the echo of his lost friend.
Relationships: Fiddleford H. McGucket/Stan Pines
Series: Time and Tears [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2118174
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just had the thought, hey, wouldn't Fiddleford have recognized Stan as the twin of his research partner? So this came out. POV Stan just to be clear. 
> 
> Oh, I also named Mrs. McGucket 'Caroline' as in 'sweet Caroline' because this is my story and I can do what I want. :)
> 
> (please comment i’m so lonely)

Oh, great. This guy is back.

He knows your name for some inane reason, which isn’t too much of a surprise considering you sell that as part of the whole “Mr. Mystery” package, but whenever this guy in particular says it, it feels weird. Perverse, in a way. He’s the kind of guy you really don’t want to know your name if you can help it - you’ve got a radar for that, and he trips it every time.

But here he is, had showed up fifteen minutes before the end of the last tour of the day and watched you with glassy eyes and a vacant, fixed smile that looks incredibly too much like the one the waitress at Greasy’s usually has (yeah, right, uh, Sue. She’s an oddball too). Creepy little cult town, you figure, whatever. He’s harmless.

But even though he’s no physical threat (understatement, he looks to be about a buck twenty-five soaking wet, despite his height, and he’s rail-thin in the way that looks like you could snap his arm off if you shook his hand too hard), his presence is still unnerving. He comes up to you at the conclusion of the tour, while you’re still waving tourists off with that rakish, plastered-on grin you’d mastered, and then he just stands there, wringing his hands in front of his chest. You’d almost think he was nervous or something, but no, he’s still got that empty little smile on his face. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

His eyes, you notice now that he’s holding your gaze, are a honey-brown, and his hair isn’t actually gray, it’s just ash-blond and unwashed.

“Can I help you there, buddy?” Your voice is measured, carefully detached, and you glance away from him every few seconds or so. Trying to feign split attention is harder when there’s no one else around, though, go figure. 

He fails to answer in a timely manner, so you give an annoyed little huff and turn around to start toward the gift shop door. May as well lock up, he won’t do any damage if you leave him out in the yard overnight. Like you said, he’s creepy but harmless.

Your hand curls around the doorknob and that’s the moment he decides to speak up.

“Stan. Stan, wait.”

You jump, just slightly, because goddamn it somehow he’s right the hell behind you. Fuck, weirdo.

“Whoever it is you’re lookin’ for, pal, I’m not him.”

Unshockingly, your rebuttal does little to dissuade him. He even looks more fervent, now - maybe you shouldn’t have given him the time of day at all. He reaches up, as if to place a hand on your shoulder, and you shrug him away briskly.

“It’s been gettin’ cold out here these past few nights, you know, and I even went and lost my key, Stan, I dunno where it coulda gone. What am I not.” He’s got that ‘so how related were your parents’ twang to his voice that makes you want to say he’s probably from.. Mississippi. No, no, wait, Tennessee. Yeah, final guess.

“This ain’t the place you’re after either, sorry bud.” 

Whatever he’s had, maybe you should try and get your hands on some the next time you can afford to take a day off. Seems like the good stuff. 

You’re about to push him bodily away and slip inside to bolt the door, just like all the other times he’d pulled this with you, when you make the mistake of meeting his eyes again.

In his expression, inexplicably, there’s betrayal. 

And you’re not a kind man, but it does tug on something deep in the recesses of your heart. His hand has found its way to hold onto your jacket sleeve, he’s playing every bit the lost puppy, and it’s getting harder and harder to just shake him off. 

Your greatest kindness to him so far has been not calling the police - he wouldn’t make it past the holding cell, not without losing whatever there is left of him. He’s kinda cute, if you get past the dirt. Under it he’s pretty enough, and on top of that he’s not right in the head. Everyone with a bit of sense knows how valuable both those things are to all the wrong crowds, and you just can’t do that to someone like him. 

It’s a small mercy, yeah, but it’s the best you’ve got. It’s not like you can invite him in for coffee. Come on.

\--

It turns out he really likes coffee.

He tosses back the cup you set down in front of him while it’s still scalding, and you watch in disbelief as he slams it back down on the counter with nothing more than a quiet hiss through clenched teeth.

“So.. pal,” you say, leaning forward onto your elbows next to the till, carefully looking anywhere but directly at him, “seems to me you have some confusion about whether we know each other.”

He doesn’t answer, so you keep talking - maybe if you spell it out for him in a couple different ways, he’ll start to understand. “We don’t. Well, I don’t know you. It seems like you’ve got it in your head that you know me, but you don’t. That’s what’s called a parasocial relationship, and believe me buddy, I’m super flattered, but it’s not real. You and me aren’t friends. Just ‘cause you know my name doesn’t mean I know or want to know yours.”

He murmurs something that sounds like “fiddle faddle”, which you elect to ignore.

“So if you wouldn’t mind backin’ off a ways, that would be great. You don’t scare my customers per se, but you like to wander and that makes the parkin’ lot a little bit more of a hazard than is ideal, you know? Listen, you got family we could call? An actual friend? I’m just tryin’ to look out for you, man.”

His eyes lift at the word ‘family,’ as if some wire had crossed in his brain, and there’s a shine there when you hazard a glance at his face again - an intelligent, eerily familiar spark, for just a brief second.

“Family, yeah, Caroline. She’s been fieldin’ my calls. Just wanted to see the little’un again, but she.. won’t call me back.”

You blink. That sentence was.. well, it was coherent. Maybe you’re on to something, here.

\--

It turned out that you were not on to anything after all. His moment of clarity passes as soon as it had come, and your impromptu guest (or, hell, maybe you could even call him a stalker. He exhibits stalkerish behavior, doesn’t he? Wow, who would’ve thought you’d ever be on the receiving end of one of those.) slams back two more hot cups of coffee that hardly touch the sides.

You’re just about to start ushering him toward the door when he stands up from behind the checkout counter of his own accord, making his way across the gift shop to stand in front of the vending machine you’d strategically placed in front of the door to the-- to the basement. 

He stares at the glass front for too long, and despite yourself you start to get antsy. He looks confused and knowing all at once - you’ve got to start employing evasive maneuvers, here, before he gets too curious and blows your cover or something.

“Come on, alright, I’m cuttin’ you off,” you grumble, pushing yourself up off the counter. Your words don’t seem to get his attention, but you’re fairly sure he at least heard you, so you gesture toward the gift shop door with an exaggerated sweep of your arm. “Good talk, yeah? Take it easy out there.”

There’s a beat of uncomfortable silence, and then he very slowly does an about-face. In your peripheral vision, he looks solemn, almost stern, his brow furrowed and his lips pressed into a grim line.

“...I’m worried about the.. about the..” His nose scrunches up like the word won’t come to him, but you seriously don’t have all night to wait for some junkie to straighten out his thoughts.

You close the distance between you, sling one arm over his narrow shoulders, and start ushering him bodily toward the door. He keeps talking, babbling nonsense at you as if it should mean something. “The, about the, the tunnel. Stan, he’s not treatin’ you kind. He’s pushin’ the moth into the.. into the sun. I’m just, you’re so tired. I’m so tired.”

“Alright pal, okay. You watch out for yourself.” He starts to struggle as you cross the threshold into the outside, and you have to practically wrestle him down the couple of steps to the parking lot.

You can’t bring yourself to look at him as you slip back inside and lock the door firmly behind yourself, you just know he’ll probably stand there, under the lone streetlight, maybe for hours. It’s just not your problem, is all. So what if he thinks he knows you, he doesn’t.

You can’t help but wonder what did it to him, if maybe he lost someone, too.


	2. recounting someone else's memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry everyone but this story wouldn't leave me alone
> 
> Expect the rating to go up again, probably, in the future.

You start to look for him near closing time. Well, okay, maybe the right word to use is expect - you’re not going out of your way to locate him in amongst the crowd, don’t get it twisted. 

He’s a fucking weirdo and whatever’s going on in his head isn’t pretty, but. 

Something in your psyche likes something about the way he looks at you. 

It might just be the attention, because hey, you haven’t gotten any positive attention- or any attention at all, really, since what. High school? 

He also looks at you like he knows you, like you’re friends, and there’s just. Well, there’s something about that. You try not to dwell on it too much. 

He starts to invade your thoughts, even when he’s not physically there. It’s not on purpose, your brain just supplies you with random musings about the creep, the only guy who’s looked at you like a person and not a product in years. So what if you wonder if he’s alright when he doesn’t show for a week? It doesn’t mean anything when you feel relief after spotting him loitering at the back of the crowd again. And it still doesn’t mean anything when, upon seeing the splint on his forearm, your relief skews back toward worry. Nope. 

This way of thinking works pretty well, up until the point you’re, ahem, releasing some tension in the shower one day and your usual fantasy - blonde, sunkissed, FEMALE - looks a bit different. Your breath catches and you lean against the tiled wall, and as you paint it with streaks of white the phantom in your mind’s eye sits back on his heels and gives you that look - his eyes are vacant but sweet, earnest, and he gives you a shy little smile that feels like a secret too filthy for even your own imagination.

\--

You invite him in for coffee again.

At first he looks confused, like he doesn’t know who you are confused, and you regret extending the invitation immediately - you try to backpedal, maybe you can play it off as a joke. But, then, there’s that spark in his expression, like a light turning on after years of disuse, and he accepts eagerly.

Another round is downed in record time, and when you reach out to try and take the cup away before he can seriously burn himself, he gives you a miffed look over the rim of his cracked, smudged glasses and that, of all things, sends a shock through you. It’s a fond look, he regards you like he knows you inside and out, and damn does it feel nice to be looked at like that.

Not many words pass between you, this time around. You sit down next to him behind the gift shop counter, almost close enough for your upper arm to brush his shoulder.

He clings to you if you let him, you find out.

You let him.

\--

You’re taking advantage of him.

He’s clearly not in his right mind, anyone who so much as glances at him can tell as much, and he’s confused about you and him being friends, and you’ve let him believe it. Shit, you let him touch you.

Sure it was just on the arm, he gave you an affectionate little squeeze the last time you saw him to the door, but it’s still, it’s still not right. He’s a mental defective, it’s not like you could go out with him. It’s not like he could want to go out with you. The only reason he pays you any attention at all is because he inexplicably thinks you know him. 

But your subconscious seems to not care about that even a little, and your fantasies evolve to be more detailed the more time you spend with him. It’s only been a couple of weeks, you’ve watched him down the coffee pot maybe four or five times, and you’ve learned more about his quirks through simple observation more so than through trying to talk to him.

For example, he doesn’t like the taste of coffee, he just mutters about “gets the job done” whenever he’s finished trying to give himself an internal heat stroke. You’re also pretty sure his name starts with an F, even though he won’t give you a straight answer whenever you ask about it. You ask about it twice, the first time he shoots you a coy little smile followed by an exasperated shake of the head, and the second time he ignores the question outright. 

He’s good with his hands, and no, that’s not just you being gross. He folds receipt paper into configurations you think you remember seeing in one of your brother’s math books as a kid, and cobbles together odds and ends from the countertop into little figurines without even seeming to really think about it.

That makes its way right into your personal quality time, you imagine that he’d be precise in his motions without feeling the need to rush. His hands are smaller than your own, he’s got slender fingers almost like a woman, but you imagine they’d be rougher, and that he’d know what he was doing.

He smiles a lot, but he’s got a couple of different ones. There’s the blank, default smile when he watches you conduct a tour, the one that he shares with.. well, a lot of other townsfolk, if you’re being honest. And that one is all well and good, he’s good looking in a scrawny type of way, and he’s missing a couple of teeth here and there but you’re no stranger to the toll rough living takes on the body. It doesn’t take away from the general attraction you start to feel toward him, it doesn’t detract from the unbridled elation when he pays attention to you, like you matter to him. 

There’s also, though, the second kind of smile - and you like that one a lot more. It’s private, almost intimate, and it usually only comes after the two of you have been alone for a while. 

Once, and this had been your favorite moment with him so far, it had accompanied that spark in his eye, the brief flare of coherence that only shows up every other week or so. He’d flashed you that secretive little smile and said, “You oughta spend more time worryin’ about yourself, Stan Pines,” and it had been all you could do not to embarrass yourself in that moment, not to melt to the floor in a mess of emotion, not to grab him by his thin shoulders and tug him into a heated, confused kiss.

And to dig this hole deeper for yourself, once you’re around him for long enough to get a good read on what he actually looks like, under the layer of grime and general, dirt-poor wear, he’s.. really not displeasing at all. 

It’s hard to place his age, what with the aforementioned toll of bad living conditions and all, but if you had to place a wager on it you’d probably say he’s about your age. Around thirty, probably, though he looks ten years older than that from any distance past two feet away from him. But he’s got those round brown eyes that look bigger from the slimness of his face, and a long, aquiline nose that somehow balances out his whole.. look. He’s always wearing the same button-down, used-to-be-white shirt that’s about three sizes too big on him, but from where his pants are cinched in at the waist with a fraying piece of rope you can tell he’s got that willowy body type (the one that makes you think, for some godforsaken reason, of the otherworldly type of people that always show up in fairy tales) that just works for you. It would probably help if he washed his hair properly - maybe, maybe next time you could offer for him to use the shower, or something. Maybe.


	3. Chapter 3

The next time he hovers around you as you close up shop, looking up at you with those devastating, hopeful glances, you decide you may as well bite the bullet and ask if he wants to come inside properly. Like, into your actual house.

“Hey pal, I was wondering, uh,” you start lamely, rubbing at the back of your head with one hand. He’s watching you with an open-mouthed grin, though, expectant, so you pull yourself together and forge ahead. “If maybe you’d want to come inside with me? I mean for real. A-actually inside, there’s a couple of seats in the kitchen and the living room sofa ain’t that bad either. Maybe we could find somethin’ to watch on TV or some shit. Just, don’t think I’m tryin’ to be too forward, ‘kay?”

He nods, and there’s a fondly exasperated quality to his body language that you brush off as him being him. (Actually, if he keeps his mouth shut, he almost seems normal, sometimes.) He has the idea in his head that he used to live here, or something. 

(You just hope he doesn’t bring up his alleged lost key again. Last time that came up, he’d gotten fixated on it, he’d actually cried and you’d had no idea what to do, had just patted him on the back and murmured that it was okay, you’re- you’re friends. He can visit whenever.)

Luckily, this time he just follows you around the back of the building, docile as anything, his hand curling around the crook of your elbow once the two of you are out of view of the parking lot. 

The action strikes a chord in you for some reason, some weird, warm thing you hadn’t felt since, what, Carla, from senior year? Point is, he’s trusting and vulnerable in that moment, and you’re big enough to protect him, and his hand on your arm feels nice. That’s all. 

The door clicks shut behind you and you gesture vaguely around the front room, your face feeling hot for a reason you don’t want to think about right now.

“Well, this is it. Ain’t much, not really, but well, uh, welcome.”

You turn back to look at him, and he’s practically glued to the door. His eyes search the room with a look that’s so close to calculation that it makes something flutter in your belly, but that feeling turns properly queasy when he speaks up - “-you cleaned up, a lot.”

Right. He’s still delusional.

“Yeah, sure. Listen, uh, it’s kind of gettin’ late isn’t it?” It’s not, it’s about five-thirty, but you can’t just offer for him to use your shower without some kind of excuse. “If you wanted to maybe do whatever you need to in the bathroom, like wash up or whatever, I wouldn’t mind.”

His cheeks flush a faint pink at your words, but you’re not concerned that he’s embarrassed so much as you’re relieved he understood what you were getting at. He takes a hesitant step forward, wringing his hands in front of his chest for a second before he turns abruptly and starts down the hall.

“It’s down that way, second door on the right,” you call after him, but you stand and watch until he opens the right one anyway. You hope he’ll be alright in there by himself, the thought suddenly occurs to you, he’s not very careful with heat and that shower gets obnoxiously hot obnoxiously fast.

Before you can really consider what it is that you’re doing, your hand is on the bathroom door handle and you’re cracking it open so you can peek inside. You’re just in time to see his shirt fall to the floor, and as you take in the sight of his back - smooth, pale, cleaner than his face with the hint of freckles on his shoulders - it suddenly hits you that you definitely shouldn’t be here right now. He’s fine, the mirror hasn’t fogged up yet which means the water is a reasonable temperature, and you’re just spying on him like some sort of pervert. 

The cold air from the open door must have alerted him to your presence, because no sooner do you draw in a sharp inhale and start to close the door again than he’s whipping around to look at you. He.. doesn’t look frightened, which is weird, he just looks mildly confused. Like he always does. You suddenly worry that this, uh, situation might be a common occurrence for him.

You stare at each other for a beat, two, and then he tilts his head just slightly to the side.

“..Stan?”

“I’m sorry, shit, sorry!” you stammer, pulling the door shut too hard with a loud ‘bang’, and then leaning your forehead against the cool wood, eyes squeezing shut, heart hammering in your chest. Fuck.

The image of him when he had turned around is seared into your mind, with your eyes closed like this you can clearly picture his body - hunger-pang thin, with worrying bruising on his wrists and upper arms, collar bones arching gracefully above his chest, the attractive curve of his waist and hips, dark blond hair curling down over his lower stomach--

You groan under your breath in annoyance, glancing down at your own body when you feel the tell-tale twinge in your boxers that means your baser, animal brain had had no qualms about thoroughly enjoying the view. Great. You went and walked in on him trying to shower, and now you’re getting off on it, too.

Your hand falls to the front of your pants almost of its own accord, and you listen to the water run as you rub gently back and forth over the quickly-forming bulge there. It’s not enough pressure for you to really try to get off with, it’s more mild, mindless pleasure that you let cloud your mind - until the sound of the shower shutting off snaps you out of it.

Scrambling away from the door, you head back into the kitchen. May as well make up a pot of coffee, it’s par for the course by now. The metal folding chairs at the tiny kitchen table aren’t anything fancy, but it’s what you’ve got, and you’ve always just gone ahead with that. It’s not long after you sit down heavily at one end that your guest appears in the doorway.

The sunset light that slants in through the window catches on what little mist lingers from the shower, and backlights him in such a way that, for a split second, he looks. Ethereal, you think the word is. That sounds right. His hair is wet at the ends, clinging to the back of his neck, and where it usually hangs down over his forehead he’s got it pushed back so that it frames his face in that effortless, tousled way that you’d always cared too much to be able to achieve. 

He’d put his dirty clothes back on, and the realization makes something twinge uncomfortably in your stomach. You should have gotten something clean for him to wear, some of your brother’s things would fit him, maybe (and there are even a couple of smaller shirts mixed in from who knows where that would probably fit him even better). But you didn’t think of it, and it’s too late now.

So, instead, you take a second to notice the slight flush of his cheeks, presumably from the heat of the shower, and the sliver of his chest that’s exposed where he’d left the top button of his shirt undone. 

The smile he shoots you is painfully coy, even something like shy, and you grin right back at him, easily. Gesture to the other seat across the table. He takes it, and wraps both hands about the cup you’d already put down for him.

His voice is slightly breathless, when he speaks, and this time the feeling in your belly is warm again.

“Thank you.”

You avert your eyes, rubbing at the back of your neck again with a short, awkward laugh, “hey, don’t mention it.”

He shakes his head fervently, and when you’re able to coerce yourself into looking at him again he’s staring at you as if you’re the only thing that had ever mattered to him. And, shit, that look goes straight through you. Your mouth is suddenly dry and your palms are suddenly damp, and if he were capable of noticing how much you’re acting like a teenager who’s nervous about his first date, you’d almost be embarrassed. But he’s not, there’s not much there behind his big, brown eyes - and, not for the first time, you think that’s a real damn shame.

“No,” he murmurs, and you almost miss it.

“Huh?”

“No, I mean, thank you,” he repeats, his tone becoming more urgent, and then--

Then he slips out of his seat and moves toward you, and before you can guess what he’s up to he’s on his knees in front of you, knelt on the linoleum - and when his hands come to rest on your belt buckle, the part of your mind that sometimes thinks better of things goes straight out the window.

Your tongue darts out to wet your lips and you nod, eagerly, lifting up out of the chair just slightly so that you can help him undress you. With the sight of him naked earlier still fresh in your mind, combined with how he’s been looking at you, you’re fully hard again in less than no time. He has no idea, no, he actually has no idea what he does to you. Your pants fall, belt hitting the ground between his knees with a clink, and his hands are back on you before you even manage to get your boxers down past your thighs. It’s quick, he doesn’t waste any time on teasing before he wraps one hand around you at the base and leans in to press a sickeningly chaste kiss to the tip.

It’s nothing but a dry brush of his lips, but you gasp sharply anyway and one hand moves to the back of his head. (His hair is drying into a pretty ash-blond, not gray at all - it’s fine and soft under your fingers.) He has his eyes closed, but you still look down at him intently, your mouth just slightly open in shock-turned-arousal. 

He makes a soft sound low in his throat as his lips part and he takes the head of your dick into his mouth, which makes you inhale sharply and curl your fingers into his hair for real. It’s something he’s clearly done before but isn’t quite practiced at - he sinks down about halfway before you feel yourself nudge against the back of his throat. There’s a pause, then, and for a second you think he’s going to gag but then he exhales softly and swallows around you, and you let out a low moan.

He hums again, quietly, as if answering you, and your hips hitch forward with a soft “ah” - you’re way too close to ending the whole thing way too soon, but you can’t help it. You have to close your eyes, settling for stroking through his hair because if you watched him you’d tip right over the edge in a matter of seconds.

Turning tricks when you were younger kind of took the thrill out of casual hookups, and sex hadn’t really been a priority for you in a long time, alright?

When he draws back you let him, you don’t force him back down, although your hand does twitch against the back of his head. He releases you from his mouth with a soft, obscene pop, and you make the mistake of glancing down at him again. His eyes are still softly closed, dark lashes fanned out over his cheeks, his brow slightly furrowed in concentration. He’s got one hand on your leg and the other pressed to the crotch of his own pants, his hips roll forward against his touch almost imperceptibly and shit, that’s hot.

You worry your bottom lip between your teeth, breathing heavily through your nose as he presses a warm, wet kiss to your tip, suckling at it gently. This action is repeated, and then he swallows you down again - this time, he manages to take in most of your length, though you still feel the spasm of his gag reflex when you bump against the back of his throat.

“Nn, fuck,” you pant, brushing your fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. You get another soft, muffled murmur of response and the vibration of it goes straight through you, and then, god, he swallows around you again and your head tips back, hits the wall behind you, and you come with a sharp intake of breath. 

It’s a really nice orgasm, the kind that’s drawn out over a couple of slow-cresting waves of pleasure, and you make a few undignified sounds that are only just barely muffled by slapping your free hand over your mouth. Ugh, god, yeah, you needed this.

You’re grinning like a fool as he pulls back, and you hear him spit onto the floor but you can’t bring yourself to care at all - even though you’ll definitely step in it later, with your luck.

“Ah, wow,” you mutter, and when you look down at him it’s exactly like you fantasized it would be. He’s staring up at you with those eyes and there’s something like sincerity trying and failing to shine through behind them. He might be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.

Without bothering to try and do up your pants again, you reach down, meaning to brush his hair back where a few strands had fallen into his face. You don’t get to, though, he reels back from you as if he’d been burned, clambers to stand up and lifts one hand to drag the back of it across his mouth roughly.

“I didn’t, I thought-,” he stumbles over his words, staring at your hands in what looks like shock, “I missed him, I thought you was--you were.. don’t tell anyone about this, you hear?”

You blink at him from where you’re seated, pants still undone and still panting lightly.

“I just,” he curls his fingers into the front of his shirt, and makes fists so tight it almost looks like he’ll tear the fabric. Then he speaks slowly, purposefully, as if casting some sort of spell, “I’d like it if you forgot about this.”

“Huh?” you manage, failing spectacularly to ask him what the hell is going on. All you wanted to do was return the favor.

You don’t get the opportunity, though. You stand up and take a half-step toward him and he turns around and is out the door like a shot, leaving you confused and more than a little hurt. Your heart does a funny little skip-flutter and your stomach drops, and then you feel like an idiot just standing there alone in the middle of the kitchen with your pants around your knees.

Well.

That could have gone better.

-

You don’t get much sleep that night. 

You can’t help but wonder how he got the whole notion in his head in the first place. Maybe he knew someone who looked a bit like you, that had happened a lot when you were a kid, people mistaking you for--

Oh, shit.

Shit, fuck, he must have known Ford.

That’s why he knew your name, both of your names, and that would explain why he’s so damn friendly all the time. His familiarity with the house. Why he only freaked out when he looked at your hands. That’s, well. That’s not good. You’ve taken full advantage of your twin brother’s charity case.

You have to laugh. Of course. Of course he would do that, and he’d go about it in a much more clean and above-board way than you. Good thing there’s not much room for self-respect left in your brain, because this, oh wow. You’ve outdone yourself.

Ah, shit. You let out an incredulous bark of laughter, you can’t help it. 

There’s absolutely no way you can ever allow a repeat of what just happened. (No matter the ache in your chest, right next to where you’re pretty sure your heart used to be.)

-

(Later, months later, when you pick up the phone and hear “Roadkill County General Hospital, is this Stanford Pines?” your voice is cold as you say:

“Who’s asking.”

You haven’t seen him in a while. He hadn’t come back for a couple of weeks after the, uh, incident, and you’d forced yourself to not care. Even when he returned, which you’d pretended not to notice, he’d hung around the back of the crowd - and he’d left with them. Which - fine. Good. That was what you wanted to happen.

You miss the nurse’s name, lost in your thoughts, but you know exactly why she’s calling.

You want to hang up but you can’t. So you catch little snippets as the nurse drones on - vehicle versus pedestrian, license suspended, not being taken into custody, emergency contact, and on, and on.

(You learn his name. It does start with an F.)

They put you on the line with him, and you’re frozen. Can’t make a sound.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, and all possibility of them having the wrong guy disappears. But you don’t answer, just frown and listen. He’s crying, with those gut-wrenching gasp-and-whimpers that always make the husband in the movie scene rush into the wife’s delivery room, “I don’t know what happened, I don’t-- I-I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” you echo back to him, and the click of the phone when you put it back on its rest follows you under the ground that night.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have y'all listened to Artpop by lady gaga I've had it on a loop for days


End file.
